Skills for Working with Genealogy Documents
Family Research Record Keeping for Serious Genealogists
May 7, 2009
Many family researchers who got baptised to genealogy online started by constructing family trees, often utilizing the work of others. Now it is time to do document research and prune some bad branches off the family tree.
Literally millions of helpful records are accessible online and in town halls, courthouses, libraries, federal archives and the collections of churches and other organizations.
Note Taking Skills and Family History Records
To do successful note taking, genealogists should become familiar with handwriting of past centuries and the purpose of such documents as deeds, wills and census enumerations. That takes patience and practice.
There are three chief ways of capturing information in a document. They are abstracting, extracting and transcribing.
Abstracting Genealogy Information from Records
An abstract summarizes salient points of a document. It often is a case of who did what, when and where they did it, and why it was done. This means getting every name, date and location accurately recorded.
Start by reading the entire document, then decide if the information in it should be kept in the same format or sequence. Genealogy is name intensive. Copy down every name in the record, even if it is not for a member of the family being researched. Also copy all relationship words, such as “son of” “late wife’s father”.
Include these ingredients:
- date, place, category and title of document
- name and contact information for person abstracting the record
- date the abstract was prepared
- location of the record (what library, courthouse, etc.)
Why abstract from records? Many documents, such as probate and land records, are full of legalese and archaic phrases no longer used. Usually there is no reason to copy them. An abstract eliminates a document’s wordiness. It also reduces the size of family history files.
Extracting Ancestry Information from Records
An extract can be a part of a document. Often it is a quotation from the document. An example is a census record. There is no need to copy all of the data in an entry. Instead of writing down the birthplace of every child, it is equally effective to say “the first four were born in Pennsylvania and the last five in Indiana." Later census records include demographic data that is not always of genealogical significance.
Other examples are taking only the needed information from old newspapers, diaries, journals and other records contemporary with the ancestor being searched. All extracts must be identified by date, source and location of the document they were taken from.
Document Transcripts as Part of Genealogy Research
A transcript is an exact copy of an entire document, plus information identifying the document itself. It must be accurate and complete. Many genealogists will abstract or extract information from records pertaining to siblings of their ancestors, but do a transcription of a record pertaining to an ancestor. Transcripts are also done of records that contain material of personal interest (an ancestor’s height, hair color and marital status) or historical significance (an ancestor’s Revolutionary War experience).
Ingredients are:
- original wording, spelling and grammar (even if incorrect)
- exact preservation of punctuation and capitalization
- notes on condition of the document (any part missing or not legible)
- identification in brackets or footnotes of any changes made
Whether abstracting, extracting or transcribing a document, make sure that enough information is given so the preparer, a descendant or other researcher can understand the content of the note taking and can locate the original document, even 50 years from now.
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